Into the Wilderness: Story 56
My fourth grade teacher scared me. I grew up in Oklahoma in the center of the Bible Belt. Although church and state were supposed to be separate, I had many teachers preach the gospel in public school. I was a Greek Orthodox Christian, a pomp and procedure religious practice very different from plain yet restrictive fundamentalist and charismatic Christianity. Orthodox Christians didn’t speak in tongues or ask Jesus Christ to be our personal lord and savior. We had richly painted icons, incense, chanting and communion.
What separated us mostly from the charismatic Christians, called the “Born Agains,” was a singular moment of decision. The fundamentalists believed that being “saved” was a personal choice made after a person reached the age of 13 or so. It is what I would call the confirmation process of the Catholic and Anglican churches on overdrive. It sometimes required re-Baptism or speaking in tongues. We Orthodox Christians believed we had made that decision from the moment we were Chrismated. Chrismation is a part of the Baptismal sacrament when the priest commands the Holy Spirit to enter your baby and enter the church of God for life. It can be a dramatic moment. One of my daughters had been sound asleep until the priest commanded the Holy Spirit. At that moment, she awoke with an incredible inhale, as if she were literally sucking in the Holy Spirit.
To fundamentalists in Oklahoma, I was not a Christian and was preached to many times by fellow classmates, parents and teachers. Even then, I didn’t understand what they were caterwauling about.
I adored my fourth grade teacher— Miss Carlson. In spite of my chubby self, she treated me as if I were visible. While other teachers doubted my intellectual strength, she knew I was smart. “Read Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” she told me, and I devoured the book. When book report time came, she allowed me to memorize Violet Beauregarde’s monologue with chewing gum and perform it with great flair and no shame in front of the entire class.
Another report on a science topic I prepared for her was on illegal drugs. This was the 1970’s time of free love and I wrote of the horrors of hallucinogens and opiates like heroin, complete with pictures cut from Time, National Geographic and other magazines. I was one of her good students.
Miss Carlson had another side to her, however. She did not like the boys and often punished them with spankings or locking them in a closet. As horrifying as this sounds, these terrible actions were legal in Oklahoma then. “Spare the rod, spoil the child” was quoted often by almost every adult I knew, including my father. Miss Carlson upgraded her rods by drilling holes in her enormous brown paddle. Today, I struggle to imagine any adult taking the time to create a paddle, stain and wax it until it shines and then drill holes to make its impact more painful. As a 4th grader, I was confused about what the boys had done wrong. One moment the class was quiet and the next, she was leading two to three boys from the room for punishment.
The stark difference in her treatment of me and of the boys in the class stood out, even to my fourth grade mind. Miss Carlson believed each day was a fight against evil. Bad boys and girls were tempted by Satan. We had to fight Satan by reading the Bible and praying to Jesus to protect us from the clutches of Satan. She taught us Jesus’s admonishment to Peter: Get thee behind me, Satan.
Miss Carlson’s daily prayers, admonishments and apocryphal warnings infiltrated my malleable mind. At night, I’d lay in bed, covers pulled over my head, praying “get behind me, Satan” or “protect me Jesus” over and over until I fell asleep. I knew great evils hovered outside the white eyelet covers of my bed. My bed was a protective raft against the sins of the world.
Also around this time, I began having panic attacks. I didn’t know this is what they were. I would suddenly feel as if I had cement weighting down my lungs and a rubber band restricting my esophagus. My mother would give me a paper lunch bag to breathe into, but this trick never worked. My attacks then were not associated with Miss Carlson’s teaching. Only recently with reflection have I made the connection.
Fourth grade began years of debilitating fear. I prayed incessantly, afraid Satan would appear to snatch my soul. I had loved horror movies but could not watch anything about satanic forces. Now, I struggle to resolve my love of this teacher and her encouragement with the damage she did.
My experience illustrates why religion in schools is a problem. Until recently, Oklahoma was one of the most, if not the most, troublesome states in allowing fundamentalist Christian ideology into schools. In 2024, then Superintendent Ryan Walters issued a requirement for all Oklahoma public schools to incorporate the Bible, including the Ten Commandments, as an instructional support for grades 5-12. He argued that the Bible was a necessary historical and literary document for understanding American history and core values. The Oklahoma Department of Education spent $25,000 in taxpayer money to purchase over 500 Trump Bibles to be placed in classrooms.
Walters was forced to resign after a tumultuous reign. His replacement has rescinded the Bible mandate. This is good news. I had one year of overzealous religious instruction in my public school. This one year unleashed nightmares and anxiety which have plagued me for decades. I gained no religious grounding or growth from my experience. Instead, I suffered with beliefs that were neither mine nor my family’s. My parents had not and would not have provided permission for such teachings.
Religion in schools harms children rather than helps. It creates generations of children living fearfully about evil lurking everywhere. It removes religious instruction from a personal and familial choice and makes it mandated. Mandates are the very breath of fascism. So while Oklahoma may be headed in a more balanced direction, I will never go back to the state. In fact, I left the state at 21 with a promise never to return. Except for 2 years when I cared for my sick mom, a few visits to my ailing father no longer here and a presentation for a women’s conference, I have stayed away. I believe in freedom too vehemently to go backwards.
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